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Network Restriction To Twitter Platform: A Bridge To Fundamental Rights Of Nigerian Citizens
[A CASE STUDY OF TWITTER BAN]
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These and other examples represent several occasions when the government
imposed network restrictions on its citizens' access to social
networking sites, such as the current Twitter ban announced by the
government in Nigeria.These pressures raise human rights concerns,
including whether companies should be required to resist pressure in
order to protect the human rights of their users.
Statement of the problem
Blogging,
video-sharing and tweeting are all crucial to the political events of
modern democracies. They are important to human rights defenders
everywhere. But the use of these new technologies to assert old freedoms
has been met with repression by some governments. A recent study of 37
countries by Freedom House cites increasing website blocking and
filtering, content manipulation, attacks on and imprisonment of
bloggers, punishment of ordinary users, cyber attacks and coercion of
website owners to remove content, in attempts by authoritarian states to
reduce political opposition. It suggests that Internet restrictions
around the globe are partly a response to the exploding popularity, and
significant role in political and social activism, of sites like
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
On June 4, the Nigerian government
announced that it had suspended Twitter’s operations in the country. The
announcement came two days after the social media company removed a
tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari, in which Buhari issued a thinly
veiled threat to the secessionist groups in the southeast "to treat them
in the language they understand." Since announcing the ban, the
government has issued directives to federal prosecutors to arrest anyone
still using Twitter — and ordered Internet providers to block access to
the platform. Following some initial confusion about whether Twitter
was accessible, it appears that most Nigerians are no longer able to
access the platform as of mid-June.According to the
Social-Media-Poll-Report (2020), more than 120 million Nigerians have
access to the internet and social networking sites and nearly 40 million
of them have a Twitter account — 20% of the population. The Twitter ban
is only the latest example of governments using their control over the
Internet and other digital technologies to surveil, censor and suppress
their people.
Thus, the banning of Twitter in Nigeria invariably
raises concerns among its citizens about the violation of their
fundamental human rights to free expression, communication, and media
association.As a result, this study seeks to investigate network
restrictions on the Twitter platform as a bridge to Nigerian citizens'
fundamental rights (a case study of the Twitter ban).
Objective of the study
The
main objective of the study is to examine network restriction to
twitter platform: a bridge to fundamental rights of Nigerian citizens.
Specifically the study seeks
To examine the if social networking such as twitter promoted Nigerians’ freedom of communication and association.
To
investigate if government network restriction to twitter platform will
affects citizens freedom of communication and association.
To determine if the Nigeria Government Twitter ban is a bridge to the fundamental human rights of her citizens.
1.4 Research hypotheses
The research is guided by the following hypotheses
HO1: Government network restriction to twitter platform will not affects citizens freedom of communication and association.
H1: Government network restriction to twitter platform will affects citizens freedom of communication and association.
HO2: Nigeria Government Twitter ban is no bridge to the fundamental human rights of her citizens
H1: Nigeria Government Twitter ban is a bridge to the fundamental human rights of her citizens.
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